The Facts
Throughout the late 18th century to the early 19th century, East Asia became doomed because of the forcible influx of foreign countries, mostly from the west except from Japan due to its successful implementation of Meiji Restoration. During the Japanese occupation throughout the whole Asian region and the Pacific War, Japan had committed unspeakable atrocities, which now considered as crimes against humanity. The Rape of Nanking and the sexual slavery of “Comfort Women” have received extensive coverage in both the academic and popular presses recently. And there have been numerous other cases being claimed by victims over the last half century such as the massacre on Korean minority aftermath of Kando Great Earthquake; the forcible relocation of the Chinese and Korean laborers who toiled under brutal conditions in civil engineering, mining, and heavy industry; indiscriminate machine-gunning, incendiary shelling, and bombing of civilian targets in China; the extermination of villages in Manchuria by murder, pillage, and burning; the illegal use of biological and chemical weapons in warfare; the vivisection and murder of human subjects for purpose of medical education and experimentation; ongoing and often fatal environmental degradation caused by poison gas and bombs abandoned by the Japanese military after the defeat; the systematic looting of hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable books from Chinese libraries; and the plundering of Asia’s wealth (Schalow, 2000, p. 7).
Forgotten Responsibility
The issue of Japan’s war responsibility broadly defined as the criminal acts of war for which Japan should be held legally and morally accountable (Schalow, 2000, p. 7). There were the moments that Japan had to face its war responsibility. Soon after the WWII, some hundreds of Japanese officials were brought into the international court of Tokyo Tribunal for the interrogations regarding to war crimes they committed. However after a long war that Japanese saw the death of several million Japanese servicemen and civilians, the fate of these few officials did not attract the public attention almost at all within Japan. Hidden behind the national-wide humiliation of the defeat and harsh lives after the war, the issues of the Japan’s war responsibility seemingly had been forgotten. The issue was mostly dealt by the victors - allied forces - through the international tribunal. However, according to Dower, the result drawn out from the tribunal was only prosecuting a few high ranked military officers, high bureaucrats. No captains of the war economy and virtually none of the civilian ideologues in politics, academe, and the media who helped prime the pump of racial arrogance and fanatical militarism paid for the terrible crimes those men on the front committed (Dower, 1999, p. 449). Along with the insufficient punishment and favorable conditions of San Francisco Treaty with the U.S., the responsibility Japan was supposed to take for the atrocities have been conveniently forgotten.
Origin of Japan’s Justification on War
Since Meiji period Japan’s attempts to establish “a rich and strong nation” by unifying all the scattered strengths under the emperor seemed to work out as Japan planned. Quick adaptation of western civilization enabled Japan to build up strong social and military infrastructure, and by the beginning of WWI, Japan was ready to compete with other ‘civilized’ countries in the west. The nation’s operating mechanism, which was heavily focused on the military built-ups, brought the emergence of Japan as a new super power in the international society compatible to the west. The prestige of the military in the popular mind and the attitude of superiority among the military itself contributed to the military growing sense of independence (Hanneman, 2001, p.39). The militarized Japan’s government system became strengthened by the deep resentment of Meiji restoration deprived much of its tradition in return to the quick adaptation of western civilization. The rush modernization that swept the country since the Meiji period made Japanese feel like their past had been obliterated. Hence the appearance of extreme nationalistic movement in the 1930s could be understood as a consequence to this, an attempt to bring back the traditional pride that had seemingly been sacrificed during the Meiji era (Hanneman, 2001, p. 43). Also the growing sense of isolation because of the Exclusion Act, which Japanese interpreted as a rejection of the west, reinforced the militarization of Japan. To make things worse, Great Depression outwardly and Kanto Earthquake inwardly devastated the country. This social, political and economical environment was ripe for Japan to develop an extreme nationalism and eventually lead a war that the world had to suffer.
Kita Ikki’s theory of ultra-nationalism stressing Japan’s mission as liberator of Asia against the west, at last, provided the perfect excuse for Japan to wage a war as well as to suppress many Asian countries. Kita is often regarded either as a great thinker and theoretician of Japanese ultra-nationalism, totalitarianism, fascism or the first real Japanese social revolutionary. Yet Szpilman describes him as a person full of contradiction. He thought of the Emperor as an organ of the state and called for confiscation of all imperial property, yet he worshipped the Emperor Meiji and tried to curry favor with the Crown Prince. He railed against capitalist evils, but gladly received large sums from Mitsui zaibatsu, the incarnation of Japanese capitalism. Though he opposed Western presence in China, he hoped to develop that country with the help of American capital. He recommended an alliance between the United States and Japan, yet almost in the same breath he attacked the U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson, as ‘a great fool’ and ‘a worthless mediocrity.’ (Szpilman, 2002, p. 468)
In a sense, Kita’s perception of Japan in the international politics was carved by paradoxical world view that Japan had indulged in since the Meiji era. The sense of loss in return for the rushing adaptation of the west, which they considered as an ultimate enemy was prevailed in Japan in its 1930s and Kita’s writings were well reflecting the stream of thoughts. Armed with Kita’s ultra-nationalistic ideas, Japanese must feel legitimate and even proud to ‘liberate’ its neighbor countries from the common enemy of west. The surrender speech of Emperor Hirohito also clearly showed Japan’s world view of the time saying, “We cannot but express the deepest sense of regret to out allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated with the Empire toward the emancipation of East Asia.” The mentality of Meiji era was again emerged during the American occupation period in Japan and provided self-justification of the war. Since Japan found an ‘ideal’ cause of war, it must not have been a serious matter for Japan to consider over the war responsibility. Once again, Japan had to “suffer what was insufferable” in order to regain its full strength to counter the west and Japan had an obligation to become a ‘liberator’ or a ‘protector’ of Asia against the ‘evil’ west. Within the grandeur thoughts of Japanization of Asia, Japan must have felt perfectly justified regardless of how much the people of countries Japan invaded had been suffered under its occupation.
Possible Causes of Japan’s Denial on War Responsibility
The lack of public attention within Japan as well as the insufficient root-outs of persons who were responsible of war crimes provided the potential reasons that the issue has not been dealt in proper manner. Especially the question of Emperor Hirohito’s war responsibility, which was double-edged sword because it provided the peaceful and whole American occupational reign in Japan yet it represented the double standard of decisions from the Tokyo Trial by exempting the head of the perpetrators from the punishment. Hirohito died in 1989 with a good old age, his image was so completely sanitized that political leaders from all over the world came to pay tribute at his funeral. And many loyal Japanese did conclude that if the emperor was blameless, so were they (Bix, 2000).
The more sad fact is that the younger generation of Japan is thus largely ignorant of the facts and perceives Japan only as a victim of war, not as a perpetrator or aggressor. The Japanese ignorance about Japan’s role in the war is more a product of deliberate mis-education than of oversight. School textbooks, which in Japan must pass the scrutiny of the government’s Ministry of Education, convey to Japan’s children a carefully controlled image of wartime Japan. Until lawsuits in the 1980s challenged the Ministry of Education’s whitewashing policies, textbooks were not allowed to say that Japan had invaded China, only that Japan “entered” China; the Nanking massacre (when acknowledged at all) was nothing more than a small-scale military “incident” resulting from a unfortunate breakdown in military discipline; the annexation and occupation of Korea and the increasingly draconian policies towards Koreans were barely touched upon. In short, any actions that might place the emperor, the state, or the ruling elite in a bad light were excised from the history books (Schalow, 2000).
Also eventual defeat of Japan as a result of two powerful atomic bombs fallen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to have Japanese perceive themselves as victims not as perpetrators. Because of the incident, Japan, in a way, was provided with justification for devising a cultural discourse in which Japan is the innocent victim rather than the guilty perpetrator. The post-war literature of Hiroshima and Nagasaki appears to provide convincing testimony that no one was made to suffer more terribly in the war than the Japanese themselves (Schalow, 2000).
Avoiding War Responsibility
Owing to the all combined reasons, Japanese government has been capable of refusing to accept accountability and apologize for war crimes they conducted. This has infuriated and insulted not just survivors but many Asian people and their governments as well. The visitation of Japanese Prime Minister to Yasukuni Shrine always has been provoking great resentment in Asia especially in China and Korea yet the claims from it neighbor countries have never been affected to Japan’s nationalistic routines. Enshrined in it are Class A war criminals and lesser war criminals along with others who died in the wars; a shrine visit would be equivalent to a German chancellor visiting a memorial dedicated to Hitler and his Nazi henchmen. Understandably, a visit to the shrine is anathema to victims of Japan’s aggressive wars (The Associated Press, 2001; Herskovitz, 2001). Regarding to this, Dower addresses in his book Embracing Defeat, “One of the most pernicious aspects of the occupation [of Japan] was that the Asian peoples who had suffered most from imperial Japan’s depredations – the Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians and Filipinos, had no serious role, no influential presence at all in the defeated land. They became invisible.” (Dower, 1999, p. 27) More than fifty years after the end of the war, a review of the Japanese government’s actions suggests a nation unwilling to acknowledge and accept responsibility for its past atrocities. On the other hand, neither did the international community provide conditions favorable to holding Japan accountable (Lee, 2001).
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